CEMETERY DANGER

Evening Star, Issue 19776, 28 January 1928, Page 10

CEMETERY DANGER

SPREAD OF DISEASE GERMS. t> When burials take place on the eastern slope of Hockwood Cemetery, Sydney, ‘ all the serins in the world,” nidennen fear, will be washed down through Stratbfickl. Though laymen and doctors have long suspected cemeteries of breeding disease, surprisingly little evidence is available that they do. In Burlington, lowa, U.S.A., however, during a cholera epidemic, it was noticed that there were no deaths near the city cemetery until about twenty victims had been buried. Then cases began to occur, and always in the direction from the cemetery in which the wind blew. That was in 18-30, and a doctor making researches twenty-five years later, remarked on the fewness of more modern examples. In Britain, animal dead of anthrax are cremated or destroyed by corrosive chemicals, because whore such animals arc buried, the ground swarms with anthrax germs. MAKLNG SURE. A British Parliamentary committee in 1893 advocated compulsory cremation of human victims of contagious disease, and civilised peoples now avoid having crowded cemeteries in the midst of cities. To have a new “ Rnokwood ” further away would be the Strathfiekl aidermen's remedy. To stop all burials would he the cremationists’. ‘‘ Disease germs,” wrote a medical man lately, “ breed freely in the earth, and every human body contains those germs. Therefore, every corpse buried in our midst constitutes a menace to public health,” Even if the menace can’t be measured, says cremationists, it’s better to bo sure than sorry. And cremation certainly leaves nothing to chance.